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The key to happy memories
The key to happy memories rests in a content today.
- Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:47 March 3, 2008
Memories that sing of our saddest thoughts or memories that ring about the momentous moments are the permanent dyes that colour life.
They weave a tapestry from our past moments. It is this cache of innumerable "Tutankhamens" that add glitter to the present.
No soul can be without being a living witness to a dead past. Unheard melodies might be sweater than the heard ones - but never enough to beat the syrupy flavour of the silent lute, whose strings still stir the heart.
The layout of life is very simple, provided we do not entangle it into a web of complicated philosophies. Come to think of it, life is nothing but a picture of the present framed into eternity, for us. So the key to happy memories rests in a content today.
The misanthropes are bound to raise the million dollar question about happiness being but a chance happening. They can even quote Thomas Hardy and call "Happiness" an "occasional episode in the general drama of pain". It all depends upon the perceiver. Some find a glass half full, some half empty. But in either case, some substance has to be there to make it appear half of both.
The gist is, no matter of what hue our present is, it can never be uniform. It is bound to be akin to a rainbow.
Withering moments
The present has no existence without the past, which is the archive of withering moments. You need to be a clairvoyant to peep into the future, but you need no such art to read the past. It is an open book. People complain of the heart throbs that turn into heart breaks; of trust that gives way to treachery; of love that begets disgust; and gratification giving way to disenchantment.
Yet no one's album of life has just black and white snapshots. There has to be some colour, even if it is peeping out from the grey veil, like blooming flowers or foaming waves. The still will not run, but the memories it generates are bound to snowball into an avalanche; resurrecting the buried moments once again. The past may be dead, but not so its imprint in some secure corner of our minds. It keeps sending ripples to the brain, to travel down the memory lane, to the bygone moments, minutes, days and years, lost in the haze of the past. Watch the film rewind, and observe the past salsa on the celluloid screen of your eye lids. The sense of touch might be missing; but the sense of sight is there to revive the warmth of the vanished hand.
Memories can be sweet like the first step of our child, or like forests in spring time, or like a storm in a desert; all engulfing. Or they can be dancing shadows of some dark dream, a nightmare perhaps or may be just a hallucination of some irreversible folly.
Yet once the limbs are tired or tongue too feeble to speak, the eyes are too weak to focus and ears too frail to hear. In such days of desolation or disquiet, trickling memories from the stack room of history can be a great companion. They are not just meant to brighten our dark path or lighten our weight alone. They are also there, in moments of our sunshine, to make the warmth more cozy and comfortable.
The orchestra of life has both sweet and sad notes. In fact this is the beauty of this symphony: A perfect blend of tranquillity, turmoil and placidity. It is wiser to loose oneself in the labyrinth of the past than face the drudgery or setbacks of the present in the arms of Bacchus.
Mankind is a bewildering brew of various ingredients. While for some, the concoction might be sweet, for others it might have a bitter taste. The taste of this infuse is as varied as life itself. Let us remember that shadows and light are inseparable. It is only darkness which has no such companion. It is a solitary reaper. But not so man. He has his memories to lean on.
Vimal Yogi Tiwari is a journalist based in India.
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